GlaxoSmithKline Schemes with GAVI to Offer Rotavirus Vaccine at Reduced
Costs to Third World

According to an article released in the Times yesterday, the Global Alliance
for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) have linked up none other than
GlaxoSmithKline to sell cheap, left over vaccines.

How the scheme works is by GAVI agreeing to purchase significant
volumes of vaccines over a number of years – in this case 125 million doses of
Rotarix between now and 2016.

UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron is due to host the GAVI conference in
London next week to discuss how to raise more than £2.25 billion for
immunization programmes over the next four years. This is because
GlaxoSmithKline have lowered the price of their rotavirus vaccine for the third
world.

Andrew Witty, chief executive for GlaxoSmithKline told the Times that the
drug companies decision to offer the vaccine at a ‘heavily’ reduced
cost as ‘not a gimmick or one off philanthropic gesture but part of a
concerted strategy to change their business model’. adding that ‘that the people must come before profits’.

Witty went to explain how diarrhea is the largest killer of the under 5′s in
the third world and that the new pricing structure is to allow the vaccine to be
sold to the poorest nations at a fraction of the price. He said that government
aid funding alone would never meet the funding needs of these people.

All very noble of them considering that Rotarix vaccine was suspended around
the world last year because it contained the DNA from pigs in it.
What GlaxoSmithKline are actually offering, are vaccines at a reduced price to
the third world because the take up has been so low in the Western world due to
reduced confidence in the vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has learned that DNA from
porcine circovirus type 1 (PCV1), a virus not known to cause disease in
humans, is present in the Rotarix vaccine. All available evidence indicates
that there has been no increased risk to patients who have received this
vaccine. PCV1 is not known to cause any disease in animals or humans;
therefore, it has not been routinely tested for in vaccine development.
Rotarix has been extensively studied, before and after approval, and found
to have an excellent safety record (i.e., no unusual adverse events).
However, FDA is recommending that healthcare practitioners temporarily
suspend usage of the Rotarix vaccine for rotavirus immunization in the
United States while the agency learns more about the detection of components
of the virus found in the vaccine.’

The alert finished by adding,

‘The recommendations detailed above are for the United States, where
there is less rotavirus disease and an alternative vaccine is available.
Other countries may decide to continue vaccinating with Rotarix while more
information becomes known. Available evidence suggests that the benefits of
continued use of Rotarix in countries where rotavirus disease is common and
severe far outweigh any potential risk from the vaccine.

Clinicians are requested to report any suspected adverse events
following Rotarix vaccination to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
(VAERS) via phone 800-822-7967’

In March 2010, Norma Erickson, the vaccines examiner from SaneVax, an
organization promoting the use of safe, affordable, necessary and effective
vaccines wrote:

‘Monday morning, the FDA recommended that healthcare providers across
the country temporarily suspend the use of the Rotarix vaccine, manufactured
by GlaxoSmithKline. Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the Republic of
Singapore, Saudi Arabia and several Latin American countries have also
requested that this vaccine’s use be suspended pending the outcome of
further investigations’

GlaxoSmithKline has not stopped at the rotavirus vaccine. They teamed up with
Pfizer earlier this year to arrange to supply the pneumonia and meningitis
vaccines at a fraction of the price as well. The Times said that the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest donor to GAVI, welcomed the announcements
and said:

“We’re particularly excited about the offers of the rotavirus vaccine
because the shock of learning that 500,000 children die from a preventable
disease is what drew us to work in global health. With these offers, GAVI
will be able to make even greater use of donor commitments to increase
significantly the number of children it can protect from deadly yet
preventable diseases.”

This is no generous offer by GlaxoSmithKline but a strategic move to off load
millions of left over vaccines. The third world do not need vaccines to rid them
of severe diarrhea, what they do need are vitamins, better nutrition and clean
drinking water. Their problems has more to do with poor sanitation than the lack
of vaccines.

In 2002 the Independent wrote:

‘What is the problem?
The greatest environmental disaster afflicting the planet is not GM foods or
crops, the felling of tropical rainforests, proliferation of dangerous
chemicals, or even global warming, but the scourge of dirty drinking water.
It kills 2.2 million a year in developing countries. Most victims are
children.

Forty per cent of people live in countries where water is scarce: by
2025 this is expected to rise to 66 per cent. About 1.2 billion people do
not have safe, clean water to drink. Twice as many do not have adequate
sanitation. Hundreds of millions suffer repeated, enervating bouts of
diarrhea and other diseases – sapping their ability to work and grow food.

Poor people – mostly women – walk for hours to fetch disease-ridden
water. They trudge, on average, four miles a day carrying loads of 20kg.’

What these people need from the governments around the world is massive
injections of cash, better education and nutrition, not left over vaccines that
the Western world have lost confidence in. This is no goodwill gesture but
merely a cheap publicity stunt to make GlaxoSmithKline look altruistic.

Thank you Christina for this excellent article and for drawing attention
to the unethical practice of donation of vaccines to developing
countries under the pretext of generosity. This also applies to many
other types of donations to developing countries.

The vaccine donations illustrate in fact the complete opposite
of generosity. Rotarix was unexpectedly found to contain significant
levels of porcine virus. This is not a unique discovery: a measles
vaccine was found to contain avian leukosis virus, Rotateq was found to
contain simian (monkey) retrovirus and millions of children have had the
polio vaccine which was later found to contain SV40 which may cause
brain, bone and lung cancers.

When animal or insect cells, etc are used to produce vaccines there will
always be the risk of foreign contaminants. There are plans to use
cancer cell substrate in vaccine production as it will give good yields.
Further comment about this is surely unnecessary.

Elaborate and expensive analysis methods are often developed after the
the vaccines have been on the market for a time.The discovery
of contamination depends on the will to want to find its presence. The
vaccine industry lacks this will for obvious reasons - there is "nothing
in it" for them to find contaminants.

The trick is to get the vaccines on the market and to make a huge
profit, then if contaminants are "unexpectedly" found later, to
lobby the FDA to declare that it is unlikely that the vaccines have
been detrimental to health.

Millions of people in developing countries suffer from one or more
diseases and have compromised immune systems. Giving them vaccines will
most probably make them even more ill. Vaccines will destabilise their
immune systems and will make them vaccine dependent. This is undoubtedly
the aim of the "generous" donors.

Andrew Witty, chief executive for GlaxoSmithKline explained that diarrhea
is the largest killer of the under 5′s in the third world. His statement
is misleading.

It is, as Christina implies, dirty drinking water, poor sanitary
conditions and lack of satisfactory nutrition which are the killers